Our View: A GOP shocker

The very unexpected primary loss of Republican House Majority Leader Eric Cantor of Virginia sent shock waves from Wall Street to Washington and perhaps beyond Tuesday.

It wasn’t just that a party leader of such stature was defeated, but that it came in a primary to a virtually unknown tea party challenger — 49-year-old college economics professor David Brat — who was outspent 25 to 1, racked up precious few endorsements from conservative organizations and yet still managed to come away with a double-digit win. Cantor was a national star who had risen rapidly through the ranks, seemingly the heir apparent to John Boehner as Speaker of the House. He is the first majority leader in U.S. history to lose a primary, and it seems almost no one saw this coming, including the candidates themselves.

What’s ironic is that Cantor, 51, was done in by the very type of tea party candidate he helped recruit and finance as one of the architects of the Republican retaking of the House in 2010. Evidently he was considered too moderate by most of the primary voters of Virginia’s 7th Congressional District, which is saying something given that Cantor has never scored below 90 percent on conservative credential rankings.

The conventional wisdom is that the issue of immigration reform doomed Cantor, with Brat calling him “the number one cheerleader in Congress for amnesty” — an exaggeration bordering on a lie, though the true believers who show for primaries sometimes fall for that. The challenger also alleged that Cantor had betrayed conservatives by being too eager to compromise on raising the debt ceiling and ending the government shutdown, which also is somewhat laughable given that if anyone over the last several years has stood in the way of bipartisanship, it is Cantor, who even worked behind Boehner’s back to kill various efforts at working with Democrats and the Obama White House. That said, one of the responsibilities of leadership that the screamers don’t have is to make government function; sometimes even a Cantor has to give a little.

There is some speculation that Cantor’s Jewish faith also didn’t help him, with Brat — who has a master’s degree in divinity — frequently invoking religion on the campaign trail and even saying following his victory that “God acted through people on my behalf.” Some Democrats may have crossed over for Brat in Virginia’s open primary system to give themselves a better shot in November — with a candidate, Jack Trammell, who works at the same small liberal arts college Brat does — though we doubt that explains the margin here. Beyond that, Cantor may have taken victory for granted in a district that some suggest he’s neglected in favor of the national spotlight, which rubbed the grass-roots folks the wrong way.

Whatever the reasons, we’d be wary of snap judgments regarding the national implications. Indeed, this likely says more about the demographic makeup of the area around Richmond, Va. than it does about the rest of the country, where rookie and tea party candidates have not fared particularly well so far this campaign season. Indeed, also on Tuesday U.S. Sen. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina soundly beat back a number of more conservative wannabes. Brat may have to do better in the fall than merely displaying a photo of the other guy standing in proximity to President Obama.

This development does look to mean more grief for Boehner, as it may embolden the purists who have shown little interest in actually governing. If the tea party declares civil war on the Republican establishment — as some of those lining up for Cantor’s leadership post and the dominoes just behind it before the corpse is even cold suggest is possible — well, that could accrue to the benefit of Democrats, as could the now-likely demise of immigration reform this year and the perception that resistant Republicans are hostile to Hispanics.

Whatever, if this has been one of the least productive and most unpopular Congresses in all of American history, this election outcome doesn’t seem likely to change that.